ON7DQ SOTA Tour : in 9 days to Friedrichshafen and beyond

Summary

Last year (2016) was my FIRST EVER visit to the Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen (FH). Other years I couldn't get away from my teaching job, as we were in the middle of exams ... but since I was going to retire, my director had given the permission to take a long weekend off ...

I liked it so much, with all the SOTA activities and such, I wanted to be part of it again this year.

Only problem : the friends who drove me there last year, didn’t go this time (because of the shift to mid July), and I’m not such a good driver that I could drive all the 770 km to FH in one day. There had to be a better solution.

So I planned to split the drive in three days each way, and do a bunch of SOTA activations.
This also meant I had my own car over there to do … even more SOTA activations ! hi

Results 

By the time I got back home, I had driven 2400 km, and had stayed in 5 different places (all booked via AirBnb).

In total, I activated 22 summits in 6 countries :  LX - F - DL - OE - HB0 and ON.

Here the list of activated summits :

11/Jul/2017 LX/LX-002 (Grengenwald)

11/Jul/2017 LX/LX-004 (Widderbierg)

12/Jul/2017 FL/VO-002 (Le Hohneck)

12/Jul/2017 FL/VO-089 (Haut de la Pierre de Taille)

13/Jul/2017 DM/BW-003 (Belchen)

13/Jul/2017 DM/BW-015 (Hochfirst)

13/Jul/2017 DM/BW-193 (Schächer)

15/Jul/2017 DM/BW-348 (Gehrenberg)

16/Jul/2017 OE/VB-525 (Kummenberg)

16/Jul/2017 HB0/LI-012 (Schellenberg)

17/Jul/2017 DM/BW-042 (Rainen)

17/Jul/2017 DM/BW-046 (Plettenberg)

17/Jul/2017 DM/BW-057 (Lupfen)

17/Jul/2017 DM/BW-067 (Brandenkopf)

17/Jul/2017 DM/BW-156 (Lindenberg)

18/Jul/2017 FL/VO-003 (Gazon du Faing)

18/Jul/2017 FL/VO-007 (Le Grand Brézouard)

18/Jul/2017 FL/VO-014 (Chaume de Sérichamp)

18/Jul/2017 FL/VO-016 (Le Rossberg)

19/Jul/2017 ON/ON-016 (Les Aisances)

19/Jul/2017 ON/ON-017 (Bois Haut)

19/Jul/2017 ON/ON-021 (Plantis de Mesnil)

This gained me 157 points, which brought me way over the 500 point mark (actually to 604), so that I am a “half goat” now … hi.

Also made 50 S2S qso's, raising my S2S score from 990 to 1326, which will keep me on the number 1 spot for Belgium for some time (I hope ;-).

I had planned a couple more summits but had to cancel some because of bad weather (see day 1 and 2), or blocked access roads (see day 3).

Read the day-to-day reports for more info on each summit and my other adventures at the Ham radio ...

(to be continued ...)

Luc - ON7DQ